As the ground still shakes from the Aroldis Chapman trade, a thought keeps entering my mind:
Wow, I can’t believe how poorly I read this market. I penned an article a few weeks back, arguing that a swap of Andrew Miller for Adrian Gonzalez straight up would make sense for both teams, and boy was I wrong. Part of that was defensible; the calculus has changed since then. The Yankees haven’t made up any ground in the playoff race, and remaining stagnant while games tick away in the season schedule is called, well, losing ground. Gonzalez holds more value in the near-term than he does in the long-term, so he makes less sense as a trade target now than he did before.
However, I also underestimated the trade value of an elite reliever in this market, and the Yankees’ front office just showed me how wrong I was. You, as readers, come to our website to read writers’ thoughts because you probably think we know more than the average human being about baseball, and I’d like to believe that’s generally true. But we’re not infallible either, and I know when to acknowledge I took an ‘L.’
If we assume that Aroldis Chapman is worth X, and Andrew Miller is worth a coefficient times X, then Miller is worth a metric ton of baseball value*. I don’t know exactly what that might be, but it’s a heckuva lot more than Adrian Gonzalez.
*remember this statement for later on in the article
With a seller’s market this strong, should the Yankees hold a complete fire sale? Think about this — the Yankees took a package of mediocre prospects, none of whom are likely to ever be MLB regulars, and turned them into a top 30 prospect across the minor leagues, along with another borderline top 100 prospect. But wait — there’s more! The third piece in this deal was basically the entire return (sorry, Brendan Ryan, you don’t count) for Starlin Castro, who also could be moved for more prospects in the next week. And the fourth piece is a toolsy athlete that scouts like as more than just a throw-in. The Yankees also got roughly three months of utility out of Chapman. Now, what exact brilliance did the Yankees do to accomplish this? Nothing, really. Chapman didn’t perform drastically better than his projections or than he has in any other season of his career. Rather, they just happened to read the market well on the buying end, then took advantage of a huge seller’s market in a “right-place, right time” type of deal. This Chapman trade provided a huge boost to the farm, and imagine what selling the rest of the veterans could do to the system.
This thought of stocking the farm system plump with promising youngsters enticed me enough to consider the possibility of a complete fire sale. And, to be completely honest, there was a point in time that I considered writing this article with a completely different answer. However, in the end, it probably is best not to hold a fire sale. Why not?
1) The Yankees probably won’t receive, proportionally, the same for their other pieces that they did for Chapman. Remember how I told you to keep a certain statement in mind earlier in the article? There’s a certain logic that I hear a lot in the baseball world that, if Player X is verifiably worth exactly twice as much as Player Y, then Player X should be moved for exactly twice as much as Player Y was moved for. This is broken logic. It’s undoubtedly what you’d be hoping for, if you’re a fan of Andrew Miller’s team hoping he gets traded. It’s undoubtedly the same logic that teams like the Royals are telling teams that are calling about Wade Davis. But it’s not correct. That would imply that, because the Tigers got Michael Fulmer (and Luis Cessa) for two months of Yoenis Cespedes, that the Reds should not deal Jay Bruce unless they receive a proportionally equal return. But that’s obviously not true; they should move him for the highest offer, as long as that offer is better than the value of a compensatory pick they would receive at the end of the season by holding onto Bruce.
This applies to every single player that teams may be thinking about dealing away. Every transaction is unique and independent of other transactions. All teams value players differently, and teams have different levels of motivation to be making every trade as well. This is how you see, for example, the same team getting a king’s ransom for Shelby Miller, while also giving away Alex Wood for virtually nothing in the same six-month period.
This was a long-winded and more thorough way of saying that you can’t extrapolate the return in the Chapman deal and apply it proportionally to every single player that the Yankees could sell.
2) Scarcity exists in every resource. I know that’s a basic principle of economics, but how does that apply to the baseball trade market? Well, the Cubs are in a unique position. They haven’t won a championship in over a century, and they also happen to have the best team in baseball this season. But every team has a different level of desperation for winning now, and so there’s scarcity in that. Even if every contending team were as “all-in” as the Cubs were, there is a scarcity in the number of contending teams that exist. Even if every contending team were equally ravenous to win and there were twice as many buyers, there is a scarcity in the number of holes that each team needs to fill. For example, the Cubs and Nationals don’t really have any glaring needs. But even if every contending team were equally ravenous to win and there were twice as many buyers and they were willing to buy regardless of position or team fit, there is a scarcity in the number of prospects or other assets they have to give up, especially with other sellers also in the market to compete with. The Cubs just gave up their best prospect in Gleyber Torres, so even if they were interested in Andrew Miller and willing to pay a proportionally similar price, they don’t have a proportionally better prospect to Torres.
3) Looking into next year, the AL East is wide open for the taking. Sure, the Red Sox look like a burgeoning dynasty, and they’ll be tough to beat next year. But the Blue Jays’ wrecking crew of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion is entering free agency together, and even in the minimal chance that Toronto manages to re-sign one or both, each of them is in their mid-30s. The Rays have been awful this season, and the fact that they’re entertaining the thought of moving Evan Longoria or Chris Archer means that they could be entering a long phase of rebuilding. And finally, the projection systems didn’t like the Orioles retroactively in 2016, nor do they like them that much going forward. The AL East, which is almost perennially a four or five-team race, could be the Red Sox and a bunch of middling teams next year. It behooves the Yankees to try to compete next season.
So yes, be excited for the potential return for Carlos Beltran, who absolutely should and will be dealt this week. And if Andrew Miller gets dealt, be excited for that return too, because that means he’s getting moved for something close to the Aroldis Chapman multiplier. But when word comes down from the higher-ups that the end of July will consist of dealing off pending free agents only while still faux-contending, don’t be too disappointed because this is absolutely a reasonable and understandable move.
Photo: Noah K. Murray / USA Today Sports